unfit subject for exultation, since the dark intrigues of the interior conspirators were made the instruments of the fall of Sidney and Russell.  The return of the Duke of York, with his beautiful princess, and the rejoicings which were supposed to take place, in heaven and earth, upon Charles’ attaining the pinnacle of uncontrolled power, was originally the intended termination of the opera; which, as first written, consisted of only one act, introductory to the drama of “King Arthur.”  But the eye and the ear of Charles were never to be regaled by this flattering representation:  he died while the opera was in rehearsal.  A slight addition, as the author has himself informed us, adapted the conclusion of his piece to this new and unexpected event.  The apotheosis of Albion, and the succession of Albanius to the uncontrouled domination of a willing people, debased by circumstances expressing an unworthy triumph over deceased foes, was substituted as the closing scene.  Altered as it was, to suit the full-blown fortune of James, an ominous fatality attended these sugared scenes, which were to present the exulting recapitulation of his difficulties and triumph.  While the opera was performing, for the sixth time only, news arrived that Monmouth had landed in the west, the audience dispersed, and the players never attempted to revive a play, which seemed to be of evil augury to the crown.

Our author appears to have found it difficult to assign a name for this performance, which was at once to address itself to the eye, the ear, and the understanding.  The ballad-opera, since invented, in which part is sung, part acted and spoken, comes nearest to its description.  The plot of the piece contains nothing brilliantly ingenious:  the deities of Greece and Rome had been long hacknied machines in the masks and operas of the sixteenth century; and it required little invention to paint the duchess of York as Venus, or to represent her husband protected by Neptune, and Charles consulting with Proteus.  But though the device be trite, the lyrical diction of the opera is most beautifully sweet and flowing.  The reader finds none of these harsh inversions, and awkward constructions, by which ordinary poets are obliged to screw their verses into the fetters of musical time.  Notwithstanding the obstacles stated by Dryden himself, every line seems to flow in its natural and most simple order; and where the music required repetition of a line, or a word, the iteration seems to improve the sense and poetical effect.  Neither is the piece deficient in the higher requisites of lyric poetry.  When music is to be “married to immortal verse,” the poet too commonly cares little with how indifferent a yoke-mate he provides her.  But Dryden, probably less from a superior degree of care, than from that divine impulse which he could not resist, has hurried along in the full stream of real poetry.  The description of the desolation of London, at the opening of the piece, the speech of Augusta, in act second, and many other passages, fully justify this encomium.